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It's always surprising to see a correction has made the top ten most blogged pieces of the day at the NYT, but today, I can understand the interest. Financial writer Zachery Kouwe has apparently been copying his work for the New York Times' DealBook blog from the Wall Street Journal.
The Times was alerted to the problem by editors at The Wall Street Journal. They pointed out extensive similarities between a Journal article, first published on The Journal’s Web site around 12:30 p.m. on Feb. 5, and a DealBook post published two hours later, as well as a related article published in The Times on Feb. 6.Those articles described an agreement on an asset freeze for members of Bernard L. Madoff’s family, in a lawsuit filed by a court-appointed trustee. In the Times article and the DealBook post, several passages are repeated almost exactly from the Journal article.
A subsequent search by The Times found other cases of extensive overlap between passages in Mr. Kouwe’s articles and other news organizations’. (The search did not turn up any indications that the articles were inaccurate.)
Well, it's nice to know he was only plagiarizing, not making shit up, I guess. But John Rabe at Southern California Public Radio asks a more interesting question, I think: "Just how dumb do you need to be to steal from the Wall Street Journal, especially when you work for the New York Times?"
The answer, here, may be: not that dumb. Note that the problem was brought to the attention of the The Times by The WSJ editors -- not by commenters, not by WSJ readers, not even by other reporters. There's probably not as much reader overlap between these papers as one might think, particularly in that those who read the Wall Street Journal probably don't turn to the Times for analysis. Also, readers of the NYT's DealBook blog are, I would guess, somewhat less likely to be paying subscribers to the Wall Street Journal -- a subscription that would most likely have been necessary to notice the copying.
This is in no way to dismiss what Kouwe's done as OK. It's completely not. It violates not only the Times' ethical standards, as they discuss in their correction, but also the trust that readers have in the product on their Web site. Plagiarism is a serious crime between writers, and I hope Mr. Kouwe pays for it with his job.
It is, however, rampant. When citation should be easier than ever, the pressures of quick writing are turning more and more writers into thieves. Put on top of that the reluctance of many news sites to link to competitors and you've opened the door to more and more plagiarism down the road.
Learn to link. It will save you.
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Catherine Forsythe
Writer to the Stars
Emily Holleman
Iron Skillet
Leslie Harpole
old new lefty
Salon.com
Comments
R
The same dynamic applies in every line of work I've bumped up against in recent years, and the inevitable dire consequences can be seen in everything from cars and entertainment to spelling and punctuation. It's not coincidence the Death of Chrysler parallels the Death of the Comma.
Death of the Comma
.
Not plagiarism, but not quite right, I think. Or, if that is acceptable, then why not simply cite the WSJ, throw in some additional background, call an 'expert' and write it up?
Nick -- yeah, the line is getting blurry. I think it mostly is a benefit to places like the NYT to get referenced in stories like what you're talking about -- it increases their reputation as a source of news, and may eventually drive traffic to their paper and Web site. I have fewer problems with that than with the way Huffington Post does its "Quick Read" pieces, where they essentially hijack the content of another paper and, though citing it, take the profits for themselves of all of that work. Why read the NYT when you can scan it for free at HuffPo, you know?
In short, as crazy and self-destructive as this seems, I can see why the temptation to copy would be strong, especially if 1) you're in a lower level job, and 2) you don't think you're likely to get caught, as you explain in this case (and since he didn't get caught right away, it suggests he did the math on that just like you did).
It reminds me of how smart affluent kids cheat in school not because they couldn't do fairly well the usual way but because of the enormous expectations on them for grades and college admissions that creates too much pressure to resist. These days journalists are terrified about losing their jobs and at the same time being asked to do much much more, much much faster. It's a recipe for this kind of problem to occur.
From the bit of study I've done, this apparently is a serious pain for news and historical documents. The analysis part of news, the part that is not a simple statement of fact are protected. And, in fact, the non-facts (errors or intentional falsehoods) probably enjoy good copyright coverage. (This may be one of several reasons that trap streets are used in maps, and I wouldn't be surprised if news stories sometimes have trap facts.)
Then again, cases like International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918) offer some counterpoint; and there might be more recent cases. This is just the one I was originally taught long ago. (From the syllabus: “But one who gathers news at pains and expense, for the purpose of lucrative publication, may be said to have a quasi-property in the results of his enterprise as against a rival in the same business, and the appropriation of those results at the expense and to the damage of the one and for the profit of the other is unfair competition against which equity will afford relief.”) My knowledge of this is mostly pre-web, and I imagine this must have been tested a lot in recent years; anyone know if there are better and more recent citations?
I've been mulling over doing a post on issues involving copyright, fair use and ethics generally, but specifically about photography and rampant misuse and misunderstanding of appropriating images on the internet, but it probably would just come across as a scold notwithstanding the TOS.
well done J.
Rated
As and aside:
1) I feel that I have received short courses in Journalistic Ethics and Copyright Law.
2) I think John Blumenthal's comment is the funniest comment that I have read in my short time on OS.
3) Does the period come before or after the quotation marks (above) ?
My point is, some dishonest people plagiarize their stories and some simply revise the wording of others. Both are dishonest in their own way of distorting the facts. The constitutional wording is about "separation between Religion and Government," James Madison, W&MQ, 3:555. Will the NYT or the WSJ either one pick up on the dishonesty of Glenn Beck?
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